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These are the 15 Companies that best combine innovative technology with an effective business model and hence they are the most technologically advanced complained of this 21st century human world:Some are large companies that seem to be growing ever larger, like Amazon and Apple. Others, like IBM, or General Electric are old-guard giants betting on technology renewal. And the list is full of ambitious startups like SpaceX, which is changing the economics of space travel with reusable rockets.1.Nvidia:- Headquarters Santa Clara, California ◆ Industry Intelligent machines ◆ Status Public ◆ Valuation $90.9 billionThough Nvidia still makes most of its money from selling graphics chips for video games, it has established itself as the leading provider of processing power for AI software, and its newer, AI-related businesses are growing quickly. During its most recent financial quarter, revenues from its data-center and automotive businesses increased by 186 percent and 24 percent, respectively, over the previous year. The company says all the major Internet and cloud-service providers use its chips to accelerate their processes, and a number of large carmakers, including Toyota, are using its autonomous-driving technology.$3 billion: spending on R&D to create its new data-center chip.Nvidia CEO: Software Is Eating the World, but AI Is Going to Eat SoftwareThe Race to Power AI’s Silicon BrainsDrones and Robots Are Taking Over Industrial InspectionBattle to Provide Chips for the AI Boom Heats Up2.SpaceX:- ◆Headquarters Hawthorne, California ◆ Industry Transportation ◆ Status Private◆ Valuation $12 billionIn 2017, SpaceX proved it’s possible to fly a rocket into space carrying a payload, bring it back, refurbish it, and launch it again with a new payload. Reusable rockets make space travel far cheaper and faster: they are critical to SpaceX’s long-term goal of establishing an interplanetary transport system. The startup also compressed the time needed to refit its recycled rockets (from one year to a few months) and began preliminary tests of its Falcon Heavy booster, which is expected to be the world’s most powerful rocket when it is completed later this year.10 percent: price discount being considered for customers who agree to fly their payloads on reused rockets3.Amazon:- Headquarters Seattle, WashingtonIndustry Connectivity ◆ Status Public ◆ Valuation $479.3 billionAmazon is using a range of AI technologies, including computer vision, machine learning, and natural-language processing, to reinvent mobile computing and shopping. The company’s voice-activated assistant Alexa now controls everything from TVs to cars and is poised to be the next important computing platform. Amazon is also streamlining the brick-and-mortar shopping experience through its Seattle-based Amazon Go convenience store. Customers simply enter the store, scan an app on their smartphones, and walk out with the items they wish to purchase. Amazon uses AI, cameras, and sensors to identify the products they have selected and bills them automatically—no lines or checkouts necessary.12,000: number of programs that software developers have published for Alexa with Empathy4.23andMe:- Headquarters Mountain View, California◆Industry Biomedicine◆Status Private◆Valuation $1.1 billionA pioneer of direct-to-consumer genetic testing since its founding in 2006, 23andMe ran into trouble in 2013 when the FDA barred it from distributing health information. But this year the regulator changed course and reopened a major business line for the company, permitting it to market genetic reports on risks for late-onset Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, and eight other conditions. After extracting DNA from the cells in saliva samples sent in by customers, the company uses a DNA-genotyping chip made by Illumina (No. 22) to capture features related to health and ancestry—information customers are then able to access online. 23andMe now has more than two million customers worldwide, and its products have been used in a number of research projects, including studies of female fertility, depression, Parkinson’s disease, and even nail biting.1 million plus: number of customers who have consented to have their genetic information used for scientific research.5.Alphabet:- Headquarters Mountain View, California ◆Industry Connectivity◆Status Public◆Valuation $673.9 billionAlphabet’s subsidiaries are technology leaders in AI, autonomous vehicles, and AR and VR, among other areas. Its DeepMind division keeps devising new ways for AI systems to mimic human intelligence and learn more quickly. Its self-driving-car project, Waymo, continues to improve performance and has aggressively defended its intellectual property by suing rival Uber after a top engineer switched teams. Google, Alphabet’s best-known and largest subsidiary, is collaborating with hardware makers to create standalone VR headsets for its Daydream VR platform. The new models will have built-in displays and processors rather than relying on users’ smartphones, and will use sensors to better track peoples’ movements in virtual worlds.40 percent: amount of energy the company says it saves applying machine-learning algorithms from its DeepMind subsidiary to cooling its data center.6.iFlytek:- Headquarters Hefei, China◆Industry Intelligent machines◆Status Public◆Valuation $6.8 billioniFlytek already dominates China’s voice recognition market and is now expanding into voice-activated command systems for cars, homes, robots, and schools. In the past year, it launched systems that enable people to control their cars, TVs, and home appliances via voice; invested in a startup that makes home robots; and established a joint venture to develop educational products that incorporate its instant translation features. It also established a multimillion-dollar fund to invest in AI-related startups around the world. It says that more than 160,000 developers use its software and more than 400 million people use its products.70 percent: iFlytek’s share of China’s market in voice-based technologies.7.Kite Pharma:- Headquarters Santa Monica, California◆Industry Biomedicine◆Status Public◆Valuation $5.7 billionThis immunotherapy company is taking the body’s T cells, which naturally fight infections, and engineering them to fight cancer. It is farthest along with its therapy for aggressive non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, with more than a third of one study’s participants showing no sign of disease six months after treatment. There were two deaths associated with the therapy based on its known side effects—approximately 2 percent of study participants—but it seems to be nearing FDA approval.39 percent: proportion of study participants very sick with lymphoma who showed no sign of the disease six months after a single treatment with Kite’s therapy.8. Tencent:- Headquarters Shenzhen, China◆Industry Connectivity◆Status Public◆Valuation $350 billionIt’s been a blowout year for Tencent, which owns China’s biggest social network, WeChat, and is also the world’s largest video-gaming company. Though WeChat already boasts more than 900 million monthly active users, Tencent keeps expanding the mobile app so that it now offers messaging, online gaming, shopping, music, videos, and peer-to-peer payments. The breadth of features attracts new users and keeps existing ones active inside WeChat, which enables Tencent to sell more ads and services. In April, the Internet giant passed Wells Fargo to become one of the world’s 10 most valuable companies by market capitalization, thanks to growth in its gaming, online advertising, and payments businesses.50 percent: proportion of WeChat’s 770 million daily users who are on the service at least 90 minutes a day.8.Regeneron:- Headquarters Tarrytown, New York◆Industry Biomedicine◆Status Public◆Valuation $55.5 billionA well-established biotech with a track record in treating eye and other diseases, Regeneron emphasizes the use of genetic information to focus its drug development efforts. In March it announced that, along with the U.K. Biobank and pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline, it would be sequencing genetic data from 500,000 volunteers to help support research into drug development and the connections between DNA and disease. It’s also put a focus on creating “off-the-shelf” engineered T cells to target tumors without requiring a patient’s own immune cells to be used, an approach that could make this field of treatment much easier to scale. Company revenue for calendar year 2016 was $4.9 billion, net income nearly $900 million.500,000: number of U.K. volunteers whose genetic data it is helping sequence10.Spark Therapeutics:- Headquarters Philadelphia, Pennsylvania◆Industry Biomedicine◆Status Public◆Valuation $1.9 billionIn addition to its treatment for a progressive form of blindness, the company has also been testing a way to combat hemophilia B, a blood clotting disorder, by intravenous treatment with viruses carrying a corrected version of the gene that codes for a blood-clotting protein called factor IX. This is one to watch because the disease, which affects one in 5,000 men, is expensive to treat conventionally.1 in 30,000: estimated number of individuals affected by the disease, Leber hereditary optic neuropathy11.Face ++ :- Headquarters Beijing, China◆Industry Intelligent machines◆Status Private◆Valuation $1 billionFacial recognition services are prevalent in China, and Face++’s software powers many of the country’s most popular applications. Alipay, the popular online payment platform, uses the technology to let users log in and make payments using their face as ID; ride-sharing provider Didi Chuxing uses it to verify the identity of its freelance drivers; and smartphone app maker Meitu uses it to offer highly detailed photo-retouching features. The five-year-old startup is believed to be the first facial recognition “unicorn,” having raised at least $145 million in recent years, including at least $100 million in December 2016.106: maximum number of points on a person’s face that its technology tracks12.First Solar:- Headquarters Tempe, Arizona◆Industry Clean energy◆Status Public◆Valuation $4.3 billionLanded some of the biggest solar-plant deals in the world last year, including a 140-megawatt solar farm in North Queensland, Australia, the largest in that country. The company, which develops, constructs, and operates photovoltaic power plants connected to the electric grid, also continues to invest heavily in its cadmium telluride cells, a promising alternative to silicon solar cells that are making big advances. This year is off to a good start too, with the company reporting better-than-expected results in the first quarter of 2017 and raising expectations for its current quarter as well.$2.9 billion: estimated 2017 revenue13.Intel:- Headquarters Santa Clara, California◆Industry Intelligent machines◆Status Public◆Valuation $160 billionIntel is benefiting from a series of AI-centric investments and acquisitions it made to offset the decline of its main market, chips for personal computers. In the past year, it bought the deep-learning startup Nervana, the computer-vision chipmaker Movidius, and Mobileye, a supplier of assisted-driving systems. The Movidius purchase enabled Intel to sell chips to drone giant DJI, while the Mobileye acquisition brought it autonomous-driving partnerships with BMW and Delphi Automotive. In March, Intel launched an AI products group to further accelerate its AI efforts.46 percent: portion of revenues derived from areas beyond PC chips14.Quanergy Systems:- Headquarters Sunnyvale, California◆Industry Intelligent machines◆Status Private◆Valuation $1.6 billionThere are many startups trying to create compact, low-cost, high-quality lidar systems for autonomous vehicles, but Quanergy was the first to develop one using solid-state technology, which increases the reliability of the laser-scanning radar. The startup’s lidar is also relatively cheap to make because it uses some of the same materials and manufacturing processes as computer chips. The sensors, which are small enough to be embedded in car headlights, can be used in advanced driver-assistance systems and will be integrated into autonomous vehicles by 2021.$250: price of its S3 Lidar sensors for autonomous vehicles15.Apple:- Headquarters Cupertino, California◆Industry Intelligent machines◆Status Public◆Valuation $761.4 billionDerided of late for a lack of innovative new products and tepid customer response to Apple Pay and the Apple Watch, Apple has launched a Siri-enabled speaker called HomePod to compete with Amazon’s Alexa-equipped Echo speaker. It’s also begun to tout its AI chops, including acknowledging its work on autonomous-driving systems. For some time Apple has been quietly hiring some impressive robotics and AI talent for its project, and its history of smart design and smooth integration of hardware and software may prove valuable assets.$257 billion: cash on its balance sheet, more than the entire market value of General Electric.Hope you enjoy.

The answer is that yes we are, but it is also the one form of natural disaster we can predict to the minute and actually prevent too, with enough research. There are people whose job it is to look out for them, and they have already found all the Near Earth Objects (NEO’s) large enough for mass extinctions, at about 10 km and larger. None of them are headed our way for the next few centuries. They are close to finding nearly all the 1 km or larger ones too - those are the ones large enough for some global effects, for the very smallest in the range, it’s a case of some colder weather for a few weeks, due to the dust cloud thrown up into the atmosphere. We know the short and medium period comets, and they don’t threaten us. Long period comets like Hale-Bopp are rare and normally in inclined orbits crossing Earth’s orbital plane in only two places, not likely to harm us.The main risk now is from the smallest ones of range 10s to 100s of meters. These ones are only regional in effect. They are like a hurricane, can cause a lot of damage, but with enough warning then everyone can be evacuated and nobody will die unless they stubbornly stay behind. Unlike a hurricane, however, they can also be prevented with enough warning and time to deflect them. And we do have warning systems in place, not yet complete but we are already a lot safer from them than we were a decade ago. And they are very rare, no known example of a city hit by an asteroid in all of recorded history (many examples of hurricanes of course).Also, forget all the movie stories about governments concealing knowledge of an impact. When have they ever concealed weather forecasts of hurricanes? And is that even possible? The answer is no, and it’s the same for asteroid impacts. It’s done in an open public way with worldwide networks of amateur and professional astronomers exchanging public e-alerts through the minor planets center.It could not be concealed even if someone wanted to. Nobody ever does hide knowledge of upcoming natural disasters anyway except in movies where it’s become a movie trope, something audiences have come to expect as part of the plot of any asteroid impact movie.COLOUR CODED ALERT LEVELSBefore I go into the details, I need to give some reassurance to the scared people who may have seen a fake news story about asteroid impacts. These are easy to check.Go to Sentry: Earth Impact MonitoringClick on "use unconstrained settings"It is colour coded so nowyou only need to check the colour of the first rowIt does not matter what it says. If the first row in that table is white, green or blue, then there is no known asteroid that is a significant risk.So the story is fake.If you are red = green colour blind, check with a friend who is not, if the first row looks red to you, a sure hit, it could be green, harmless.If the first row is yellow there's a slight chance, needs attention of astronomers, but it is likely to soon change to green, white or blue. Apophis briefly got to the top of the yellow range, level 4, in 2004. Orange means it is of public concern, though still you would expect it to miss as the most likely outcome right up to near the top of the orange, and then if it is red then it is a definite impact (though it could still be a harmless impact into a desert, ice field or ocean, indeed that's the most likely outcome at this level).You don’t really need to do this check except for peace of mind. If it ever goes orange or red - there is so much interest in asteroid impact that it will surely be headline news on the TV and in all respectable news media.See also my How to check if an asteroid impact story is fake - colour coded alert levels, and Shane Jones has done a video for this, thanks!I will explain the warning levels in a bit more detail later on, but that’s enough to get started.MOST ASTEROIDS IN THE SENSTIONALIST PRESS ARE NOT EVEN IN THE TABLE AT THE WHITE LEVELYou don’t need to try to find whatever asteroid the story was about - indeed - most of those stories are about harmless distant flybys by asteroids that are not in the table at all.This means that they have searched forward for 100 years and it never comes close enough to even enter into that table at the white or blue level. That’s the situation for nearly all the fake asteroid news in the sensationalist press. They are not even in the table at all at the white level.If an asteroid does show up as red there it’s likely to be small and probably going to hit harmlessly in a desert or the ocean. We are most likely to wait thousands of years to get the first asteroid to hit an urban area.It is very unlikely that we get an asteroid large enough to have any global effects in the next century. To do that it has to be 1 km in diameter or larger and they have found 95% of those already and all the ones of 10 km or larger - and that just leaves long period comets which are so rare that the closest any got for centuries was 6 times the distance to the Moon in the eighteenth century.POTENTIALLY HAZARDOUS ASTEROIDOften you see a story saying that NASA has said that an asteroid is “Potentially hazardous”. This is not an alert level.Any asteroid that does close flybys of Earth’s orbit is automatically catagorized as ‘Potentially Hazardous’ This means it might hit Earth some time in the next few million years. Most eventually end up doing lots of close flybys of Earth, then their orbit is perturbed by Jupiter over millions of years into sun grazing orbits and they evaporate in the heat of the sun. That’s what happened to around 50% of the test objects in this paper with statistics from 117 test objects. Around 15% get ejected from the solar system and only a few percent hit a terrestrial planetat some point in the next few million years.So most of the PHAs will not hit Earth at all, ever. The sensationalist press keep running stories about PHAs treating it as an alert level. Nearly always the asteroids are not even in the Sentry table at the white (no alert) level.For more on this: my answer to Why are asteroids passing within 4.5 million miles of Earth considered "potentially dangerous"? We can predict their course and that they will miss Earth pretty accurately, right?MAIN RISK IS FROM SMALLER OBJECTSThere are long period comets which we only discover with a few years of warning, and some of them are large, but less than 1 in 100 of the NEO’s are comets and it’s something like 1 in 100 comets that are very long period, periods of more than a century or two (we have a good knowledge of medium period comets through historical observations). The closest any comet has come to Earth is Lexell’s comet at six times the distance of the Moon in 1770, and the risk of a long period comet hitting Earth is minute. They approach the inner solar system at steep angles and are unlikely to come close to Earth. Lexell’s comet did because of a flyby of Jupiter that temporarily made it into a short period comet, it’s thought to have been ejected from the solar system by a second flyby of Jupiter.The main risk now is for smaller objects of the range a few tens of meters to a few hundreds of meters in diameter. We know only a small fraction of these. If we can predict them in advance then even with a few days warning we could evacuate a city as we do for hurricanes and nobody need die unless they are stubborn and refuse to move. The chance of an asteroid hitting a city is remote, unlike hurricanes, nothing like that is recorded in all of human history. Only 1% of Earth’s surface is urban, only a fraction of a percent cities, most is sea, desert, mountains, ice sheets, or agricultural land. We are hit by an asteroid large enough to harm a city every 80 years or so (estimates vary) but it’s most likely to be thousands of years before any of those hit an urban area. Nevertheless, because of the consequences if one did, it is good that we have people looking out for them.We can’t yet spot the smallest asteroids from the third of the sky around the sun, where it’s hard to spot them in the dawn or dusk sky. But we do have a program called ATLAS which came online in 2015, that covers the entire sky every two nights as seen from its location and it can spot most of the asteroids that approach Earth at least a couple of days to a week or two in advance, enough time to evacuate.Many asteroids pass Earth every year, often several to a day, but it’s like two mosquitoes in the Grand Canyon, the chance of any of those asteroids encountering Earth is minute. Even though some pass closer than the Moon and occasional small ones closer than Geostationary Orbit, the chance of any of them hitting Earth is still very small.With longer warning periods then we can deflect the asteroids too. With infrared space telescopes we could cover much more of the sky and the darkest hardest to spot asteroids are also the warmest and easy to see in infrared. B612 propose a $100 million project to put eight small infrared satellites in orbit could find most of even the smaller ones within a decade using tiny telescopes and synthetic tracking, and there are other ideas including NEOCam, a single larger telescope but there is no ring-fenced budget for these projects and NASA is tasked to evaluate them based on science and so keeps postponing NEOCam.The LSST giant telescope in the early 2020s will devote 90% of its viewing time for the first decade to a search for Near Earth Objects, and should massively increase the numbers of smaller objects found, perhaps 80% of them will be discovered by the early 2030s though we are nowhere near achieving Congress’s goal of 90% of the ones of 140 meters and upwards by 2020. Some time this century this risk will surely be just about eliminated. Meanwhile it is very low. Crossing the road without looking carefully both ways is far higher risk than any risk you have from asteroids. It’s much less than the risk of death from lightning. Occasionally people are killed by meteorites, one of the more reliable accounts, two reindeer herders and many reindeer in the Tunguska impact in 1908, but this is very rare.In detail:NEAR EARTH ASTEROID SEARCH PROGRAM - A GREAT SUCCESS!First, we are no longer vulnerable to the most catastrophic asteroid impacts, of the kind that helped make dinosaurs extinct. Astronomers worldwide have been searching for those asteroids for two decades now. Their search program began after the Shoemaker Levy impact on Jupiter in 1994. which was a wake up call for astronomers and politicians. Congress mandated NASA to search for asteroids, and NASA in turn funded Near Earth Object study teams, starting in 1998.This program is a great success. They used some of the world’s largest telescopes in programs such as Pan STARRS, Catalina and several others. The Pan Starrs telescope is dedicated to searching for these asteroids, imaging the entire night sky as visible from Hawaii many times a year.This survey is already complete for the “dinosaur killer” asteroids of ten kilometers or larger, and the similarly sized short period comets in Earth’s neighbourhood. We are safe from them all. None can hit us for the next few centuries. Indeed, none of these larger asteroids or short period comets come closer to us than 30 times the distance to the Moon in the next century.They have also found 97% of the ones with an estimated size of one kilometer or larger. The chance of any of them hitting us in the next century is very remote (2010 GZ60 at 2 km in diameter tops the list of the ones that come close enough to Earth for a chance of impact in the next century, but we can already be 99.9995% certain it will not hit Earth in that time),So the one kilometer or larger threat is pretty much retired too. Those are the ones large enough to have significant global effects if they hit Earth. They continue to discover them at a rate of one or two per month, and expect to find most of the remaining fifty or so asteroids of that size in the mid to late 2020s. It’s very unlikely that any of these are going to hit Earth in the next century.As for the asteroid “the size of Texas” in Armageddon - there’s almost no risk of one of those even in the more distant future, for the next few hundred million years. We know that because if you look at the impact craters on Earth, Mars, Mercury, our Moon, and what we have of the history of Venus - all the larger impacts date back to over three billion years ago. The huge craters such as the South Pole - Aitken basin on the Moon, the Hellas basin on Mars, and the Caloris basin on Mercury all date back to that time not long after the formation of the Moon, the “Late Heavy Bombardment”, 3.8 to 4.1 billion years ago. It’s the same for Earth - the largest impacts here too were over 3 billion years ago.We do have a distant future tiny one in a million chance that the large 26 km diameter comet Swift-Tuttle (period 133 years) will hit us in 4,479 AD. That means it is 99.9999% certain it misses. So, it’s not very likely and we have thousands of years to develop the technology to do something about it if needed. See my answer to What will happen if Comet Swift-Tuttle strikes the Earth in 2126?LONG PERIOD COMETSThat only leaves the long period comets like Hale Bopp (orbital period over 2,500 years). The closest flyby by any comet was by Lexell's Comet, at six times the distance to the Moon on July 1st 1770. It never returned. It’s thought to have been deflected out of its orbit by Jupiter in 1779 and may have been ejected from the solar system. Although it was a short period Jupiter family comet, it seems that it was in that orbit for only one loop around the sun, put into its orbit by an earlier interaction with Jupiter in 1767.We’d spot a large long period comet several years in advance. For instance, comet Siding Spring, only a few hundred meters in diameter, was spotted 22 months before its flyby of Mars in 2013. Most long period comets have steep inclinations and cross the ecliptic in only two places, and Earth is a tiny target. They are also rare with only a few close flybys of Earth in the whole of recorded history, with Comet Lexell still the closest at six times the distance to the Moon. Such a comet would be almost certain to miss us on its only flyby of the inner solar system for centuries to thousands of years, or in some cases perhaps even millions of years (Comet West is an example of a very long period comet, though its orbital period is uncertain).SMALLER ASTEROIDS - REGIONAL IN EFFECTThe attention has now turned to smaller asteroids of tens to hundreds of meters in diameter. These may hit Earth as often as once every eighty years or so, but most of them, statistically, will land in the ocean or remote deserts, because even today only a relatively small fraction of the Earth’s surface is permanently populated by humans. Only 3% of the land surface is occupied by urban areas according to Grump: Cities Cover More of Earth than Realized. 29% of Earth’s surface is land so that means that about 1% of Earth’s surface consists of urban areas. So 99% of impacts by small asteroids will either not hit human occupied areas or hit a sparsely occupied area that is easy to evacuate given a few days warning. Deserts take up 33%, of the land area - that’s including cold as well as hot deserts. So that means that four fifths of all impacts hit either the sea or a desert.With these statistics of 99% of asteroid impacts not hitting a populated area and only one every 80 years or so large enough to be harmful at ground level, it may not be too suprising to hear that none of them has ever hit a densely populated area or city in all of recorded history.So these also are most likely to miss centers of population - but in the worst case, an impact like that could kill millions of people. It’s also a natural disaster we can predict to the minute with enough observations. We can then evacuate the area, or warn people, or indeed, nudge the asteroid to prevent the impact altogether, given enough warning. So, even though it is a low probability disaster, it is one we can do a lot to prevent. So it seems important to be prepared for it. The aim since 2005 is to find 90% of the asteroids of 140 meters in diameter or larger. This is a tougher target and so far they have found only half of them, 7,788 as of writing this, out of an estimated 15,000,ASTRONOMERS FROM MANY COUNTRIES MONITORING THEM - AND PUBLISHING THE OBSERVATIONS ONLINE FOR EVERYONE TO CHECKSo, yes there are people monitoring them. What’s more, they publish all their observations as they do them. This is organized by the Minor Planets Center, part of the International Astronomical Union. Everything is done in public through numerous MPECs (Minor Planet Electronic Circulars). These are rather techy but mean something to the astronomers who receive them, and are sent out frequently, often a dozen or more a day. The astronomers can keep track of what’s going on at Tracking News.This effort involves teams of professional astronomers from many countries worldwide and many amateurs also. Most of the asteroids are found by big telescopes like Pan STARRS in Hawaii. It takes photographs constantly every clear night using its large telescope at a low level of magnification so that it can span a large area of the sky with each photograph. It can image the entire region of the sky visible from Hawaii to magnitude 22 many times a year, and the software then automatically detects the asteroids as faint pinpoints of light that change position between the photographs. Pan STARRS is one of the best ways we have of finding asteroids until the Large Synoptic Telescope comes online in 2021.The next step is to track the asteroids and find an orbit for them. There are so many asteroids to track that professionals can’t keep up with the task with the big telescopes. This is where amateurs play a key role. Though their scopes are smaller, they also have a smaller field of view and so can track these very faint asteroids.CURRENT IMPACT RISKSIt is easy to keep up to date with the latest news by visiting this page:Current Impact Risks. Then click “Use unconstrained settings”.There is no need to know what the numbers mean. Just look at the colour of the first entry. It is ordered with the entry of most risk first and colour coded:It will have red above orange above yellow above green. Blue objects are mixed in with the others.So you just need to look to see if the first entry in the table is orange or red. As of writing (August 2017), this has never happened. If it ever does happen, take a note of the “object designation” to the left - this is the name that will be used in news reports to refer to it.If it is blue, white or green, there is no significant risk at all and the story is fake. If it is yellow then there is a potential risk that reached a level where it is of public interest, but they expect it to be reclassified to white or blue as soon as they have more observations.If it is orange there’s a level of risk that needs close attention but it is not yet certain. If it is red then an impact is predicted. But if it is orange or red you won’t need to use that table; it will be on the national news and everywhere.If you can’t find the object in that table, then it is not a risk at all. You can still find a list of all its close flybys by looking it up in the JPL object browser. Note, the table there shows the distance in aus - fractions of the distance to the sun. You need to have at least three zeroes there for it to have a chance of hitting Earth. You can find out the distance in kilometers or miles by putting a query into Google such as “What is 0.001 au in kilometers”.DETAILS OF HOW THIS WORKSIf any of them go red, a collision is certain, but how much of a threat depends on the number.If the number is 8, then the object is large enough to form a small crater on the land, or if it falls in the sea, it could cause a tsunami. Though this has never happened yet, sooner or later we are bound to see a level 8 red alert, as these are expected to happen about every fifty years.At the red level then it is likely to be small. That’s just because there are many more small asteroids than large ones. The smallest Chelyabinsk sized objects hit Earth on average every 80 years or so. Those would be coloured blue. Larger ones every few thousands or millions of years. This makes it a near certainty that the first red one will be close to the minimum size there, perhaps 50 - 100 meters. We have already predicted a couple of asteroids of a few meters across and chances are we predict a small one 20 - 50 meters before we predict a 50 - 100 meter one.Often these are not even noticed, because the impacts are in remote parts of the world. Much of the world is still desert or sparsely inhabited. But with our population growing, there's more and more of a chance that one of these impacts will come close to a populated area. If one of these were to hit a city, it would be devastating.This is a bit like being able to predict a normal terrestrial hurricane, volcanic eruption, earthquake or tsunami - with the extra twist that if we can get enough data, we can actually predict it decades in advance. It’s also the one disaster we can not only predict accurately so long in advance, but prevent as well. With our space technology, we may be able to deflect the asteroid and prevent the disaster altogether. It takes only a slight nudge to change the course of an asteroid enough to miss Earth, if you can do it a decade or more in advance. If not, at least we have plenty of time to evacuate the impact zone and we would know the exact date and time of the impact to the minute.If the entry is red, and the number is 9 or a 10, then it's a much more serious threat, either regional, threatening an entire country, or global. These are rare. The chances are that we probably won't see one of these in this century.They do occasionally predict impacts of really tiny asteroids, too small to do damage, such as 2008 TC3 which exploded in the upper atmosphere 37 km above the Nubian desert in Sudan as a fireball, with a shower of 600 tiny meteorite fragments (total weight 10.5 kilograms) hitting the ground. These don’t show up in the table as hazardous.If the number is orange, then there is a significant possibility of a major impact, but it is not yet confirmed, and as they find out more, it may well miss. Again, the severity depends on the number.If any entry is yellow, then it merits attention by astronomers, but there is at least a 99% chance that it will miss (for levels 3 and 4) and it may be far less likely than that to hit (for level 2). It may be of significance to the public if the potential impact is less than a decade away. However, since it is so improbable, the chances are that it will soon be reassigned to level 0. For instance if there is a 99% chance it will miss, then there is a 99% chance that it will soon be reassigned to level 0.What sometimes confuses people is that they may give an exact time for the impact - then a few days later prove it misses.Well, suppose you had a high velocity rifle and were shooting at a bullseye a kilometre away. Chance you hit it is tiny. But if you do hit it, you can say exactly, probably to the millisecond, when the bullet will hit the target - the exact time to get to the target after it leaves your rifle.It’s like that. It’s more complicated because both Earth and the asteroid are moving and your errors are in the position, direction and speed of the asteroid, but it’s still usually got only one solution that’s a hit and that then is usually only going to be possible if it gets to Earth at a particular time on a particular day and year.It's a bit like someone hitting a golf ball. For the easiest par 3 hole, typically requiring 3 shots, one to reach the green and then two puts, the average golfer has a 1 in 12,500 chance of a hole in one. and a professional has a 1 in 2,500 chance. What are the Odds That My Event Has a Hole In One Winner? and for the background and terimnology Hole in one - WikipediaSo, suppose you are an average player and standing before a par 3 hole. Even before you hit the ball, you have a 1 in 12,500 chance of a hole in one. But as it leaves your club, you may immediately see it is falling short or is going too far, or going to one side or another, and at that point your chance of a hole in one has quickly dropped from 1 in 12,500 to 0.Suppose someone did a video and you show the first tenth of a second of the video of the ball leaving your club. There is no way the player can alter its trajectory, and t is already decided if it is a hole in one or not at that point, at least on an day with no gusts of wind. Yet, no matter how hard you study the video you might not have enough information yet to know if it is going to be a hole in 1 or miss by a huge distance. Just because of limitations of the resolution of your video.The ball is maybe only a few pixels across in the video and you don’t have its position accurately enough.So, it’s like that. You may also find Jeremy Lowe's entertaining answer to What are the chances of Asteroid 2012 TT5 hitting the Earth on September 24, 2015? helpful.Also this video from the Minor Planet CenterAsteroid Hazards: The View from Space - IAU Minor Planet CenterSometimes the impact risk may increase before finally decreasing. This shows how that can work:Asteroid Impact Probabilities - Why asteroid impact probability goes up, then down.The Near-Earth Asteroid 2004 MN4 (now known as Apophis) briefly reached level 4 in 2004, so it went right up to the highest level in the yellow section, setting a record. However, it was soon reassigned first to level 1 and then by 2006, to level 0. See 99942 Apophis (on wikipedia) for the details (2004 MN4 was a provisional name, and it was renamed to 99942 Apophis).This should be no great surprise as, after all, there was a 99% chance of it missing Earth even when the news first broke.Also this doesn’t mean that it ever had a real “chance” of hitting in 2036. All along it was going to miss and none of our observations changed that. Rather it just means that to start with astronomers didn’t have enough information to prove it misses.For more about this see myCan Apophis Hit Earth In 2036? NO - ‘News’ In Tabloid Fish-Wrapper Is Google Nº 1In that case it is still in the table but now so unlikely to hit in 2068, the first remaining possible date, that it is not of public concern. As the date approaches they expect to prove it misses then as well.You can also see from this example that nobody can hide the information, and that they don’t try to either. As soon as the astronomers are sure of their predictions they release it right away - and it is all done in the open anyway. You can read more about how this works here: How a speck of light becomes an asteroid. So all those movie plots based on the government hiding evidence of an approaching asteroid - they bite the dust.If (as is usual) all the entries are coloured blue (very small objects), or white or green then there is no confirmed impact threat for the next 100 years.It's quite common for an asteroid to reach level 1, green briefly. This means that it will do a close flyby of Earth, with a collision extremely unlikely.It is also likely to be a harmless impact into a desert, ice field or ocean, indeed that's the most likely outocome at this level because only 1% of the Earth’s surface is urban. 99% is either ocean, ice sheets, desert, forest, pasture etc or agricultural land with low population.So, 99% certain if it is red that no evacuations are needed and instead you get people booking trips to watch the fireball and the impact event from commercial jets :). And live TV streaming of the event. It would be quite a sight to see an impact forming a small crater, or hitting the sea, live streamed like that.But if it ever goes orange or red - there is so much interest in asteroid impact that it will surely be headline news on the TV and in all respectable news media. You won't have to hunt around in the red top tabloids to find out about it. I will explain the warning levels in a bit more detail later on, but that’s enough to get started.If you search the list there and your object isn’t in it- this means that they have searched forward for 100 years and it never comes close enough to even enter into that table at the white or blue level.REMOVED OBJECTSThe sensationalist stories are often about removed objects. To check for those go toRemoved ObjectsOver 2000 objects have been removed. It is also commonplace for an object to go to level 1, green and be removed, most years this has happened at least once, since 2002. Apophis has gone the highest, briefly went up to 4 in 2004, before it was removed.Wikipedia has a useful list ofDowngraded to zeroin:Objects with non-zero Torino ratingsWHY LARGE UNCERTAINTIES IN DISTANCE OF A FLYBY DO NOT MEAN THAT IT IS GOING TO HITAnother thing to look out for. Sometimes astronomers make an announcement saying that an asteroid is definitely going to miss Earth, but that it could miss by anything between a few thousand kilometers and a few million kilometers. How can astronomers be so uncertain of the flyby distance, and yet know it will miss?The sensationalist press often pick up on this and claim that because the astronomers are unsure of the distance it must mean it can hit.Well that’s because the largest uncertainty is usually about its exact speed along its orbital track - and so, about where Earth will be when it crosses close by to Earth’s orbit.An analogy I use - it’s like driving along a road that crosses a railway track on a bridge. If you cross that bridge every day at the same time, and a train also goes under it every day at that same time, say 6 pm, then from time to time you will cross the bridge exactly at the same time the train goes under the bridge.But it just needs the train to be delayed by a minute, or you to be delayed by a minute, and the train, even traveling at a modest speed of say 60 km per hour will be a kilometer away when you cross the track.In none of those encounters will you ever be hit by the train because you are on a bridge and the train track is below the bridge. It’s like that.For more about all these levels, see Torino Scale.NO RISK OF HUMAN EXTINCTIONIt’s worth saying also that there’s no risk of human extinction even from a huge asteroid impact the size of the dinosaur killer. Humans, a single species, survive in just about all the major terrestrial ecosystems on Earth. We are omnivores and with minimal technology, clothes, boats, fire, shelter, we can survive any natural disaster as a species. Of all the higher animals on Earth we must be amongst the ones least at risk of extinction - no risk of extinction from natural disasters at all indeed. One way or another, some of us would find a way to survive, like the small mammals, birds and turtles that survived the extinction of the dinosaurs.Homo Sapiens is listed in the IUCN Red list of threatened species - as one of the species of least concernTHERE IS IS A RISK OF DEATH TO HUMANS - AS FOR OTHER NATURAL DISASTERSHowever there is a risk of humans being killed by asteroids, much as we are killed by earthquakes, tsunami, storms, lightning and volcanic eruptions. Indeed, actually there are many well documented cases of people who have been killed by them already in history. The Tunguska impact in 1908 killed two reindeer herders, and there have been quite a few other recorded deaths by meteorite. Most are small scale, only one person or a few people at a time in most cases.Records of deaths by what we now recognize to be meteorites may go back as far as a record from the Sui dynasty in China in 616 AD. See my answer to Has anyone died from being hit by an asteroid?There is no record of a large impact hitting a heavily populated area, apart from one early Chinese account which may possibly be of a larger asteroid breaking up in the upper atmosphere and showering a large area with debris (but could be a severe hail storm as rare atmospheric conditions can lead to large hail stones falling from the sky, large enough to be damaging and even kill people on impact, for instance hail killed an estimated 1000 English soldiers in Chatres, France in 1360 making it hard to distinguish between deaths from hail or from an asteroid breaking up in the Chinese records).So it’s one of the less likely natural disasters. However it’s the only natural disaster we can predict to the minute. What’s more, given enough warning, we can prevent it too, and at the very least we can evacuate the impact zone. The costs involved in completing the survey quickly are relatively small too. $50 million for a system of monitoring cubesats using synthetic aperture tracking, to retire most of the risk even from the smaller asteroids in less than a decade. See what can we do to retire the risk from asteroids quickly?The NEOCam proosal for NASA also would have helped with retiring the risk quickly, but gets deferred over other more scientifically interesting proposals as the NASA missions are selected for their science value. Though NEOCam does have science value too, they were not able to convince the adjudicators of its value over competing missions, more recently Lucy to study a large iron meteorite close up and Psyche to visit the Jupiter trojans, both missions of high science interest. The problem there is, as usual, is that there is no separate budget for asteroid detection satellites.However the Large Synoptic Survey telescope will make a big difference when it comes online in the early 2020s. It will extend the search space to four times the current radius, so volume increased by around 64. It’s expected to find many new asteroids in its first week of operation because of this increased search space, and then will continue to find them for the following decade.COULD WE DO MORE?Yes, we could still benefit greatly from a space telescope. It would be wonderful for instance to have the original B612 idea of a satellite close to Venus orbit looking outwards to spot asteroids we can’t see easily looking inwards, because they are between us and the sun. Even the LSST will not fill this gap, except by looking for the asteroids over a longer period of time.The NEOSat would still be worth doing and also the constellation of aperture synthesis satellites in LEO. The more sensitive telescopes we have looking, the better. If a new request went out for space telescopes to complement the LSST in the search for NEOs, then I’m sure you’d get many proposals. But meanwhile the LSST will make a big difference in the 2020s.What won’t solve this is to increase the funding for NASA robotic missions, great though that would be for space geeks. NASA has selected other missions in favour of NEOCam, as of more scientific interest. That is their criterion, as it should be. It is not fair on NASA either to expect them to send such missions out of their very limited budget for robotic exploration of the solar system, and not fly interesting scientific missions so many scientists have been waiting for, sometimes for decades. Even for missions costing a few tens of mllions, it needs a separate asteroid defence budget for space telescopes to look for asteroids.IF YOU WANT TO EXPLORE FURTHERFor more background to this article seesupplementary material which covers such things as how we find the diameters of asteroids, a detailed discussion of the risks from long period comets, on historical close flybys by comets and the effects of asteroid and comet impacts.You might also like my longer Science20 blog post, also available as a kindle book about deflecting asteroids: Giant Asteroid Headed Your Way? - How We Can Detect And Deflect ThemSee also Asteroid impact avoidance - WikipediaAlso if you find asteroids scary this may help:Why you don’t need to be scared of asteroids - far less scary than lightning

Why would you want to harm the environment by reducing the amount of vital carbon dioxide in the atmosphere for photosynthesis AND greening the planet? Carbon dioxide emissions are mostly natural and the human component is very small. The fact CO2 emissions continued to rise notwithstanding the Covid lockdown shows how little industry matters.It will be seen that there is no correlation whatsoever between carbon dioxide concentration and the temperature at the earth’s surface.DR. VINCENT GRAYCO2 and Global Warming: I’m still not convinced.Jiggerj Uncategorized February 15, 2021 2 MinutesEvery time I get curious about how CO2 is impacting the Earth’s climate, it seems I always find articles that agree upon one thing: The amount of carbon dioxide in the air is 0.04%. Now, you have to understand just what that number means. If we were to add 0.96 percent to the 0.04 it would total just one percent of a hundred percent. The graph below represents the atmosphere. There are one-hundred squares, so each square represents 1% of the whole. That little black line in the bottom right square is the amount of CO2 in the air. And, that teeny-tiny amount of carbon dioxide is keeping the Earth’s excess heat from seeping out into space? Hey, I’m no climatologist, but this surely offends my common sense.Image for postIf we were to turn this graph into a grate that covers a heating duct, and then have experts claim that the little black line is causing your house to heat up more than usual (into dangerous levels), you’d call him crazy (wouldn’t you?).This article CO2 Makes Up Just 0.04% of Earth's Atmosphere. Here's Why Its Impact Is So Massive states that “Scientists widely agree that Earth’s average surface temperature has already increased by about 2 F (1 C) since the 1880s,…” Two degrees? In 140 years of the most industrial time of smoke stacks and cars with zero emissions controls? Again, I’m no expert, but I find a 2 degree increase over that time period to be rather remarkable. It proves that our planet knows how to take care of itself quite well.What I find most odd is the fact that it is well known that plant life NEEDS carbon dioxide in the air — it’s the stuff that forests grow on. So, the question that we and our scientists should be asking is, What would happen to all of Earth’s vegetation if we accidentally decreased the CO2 levels to zero, or close to zero? Would plant life diminish? Completely die off? Now, THAT’S a scary thought.What’s missing in this whole climate change debate is the answer to how massive amounts of ice has been melting for the last 2.6 million years without any human interference, and how that particular process is separate from what we’re seeing now? How does a few hundred years of human industrialization get blamed for a process that started even before homo erectus evolved into homo sapiens?Image for postI know I’m wrong, but after hearing the numbers involved, what I would expect the scientific community to be shouting is:All this government hot air and expensive trips around the world signifying nothing.DRAMATIC EVIDENCE FROM THE COVID LOCKDOWN THAT HUMAN CO2 EMISSIONS ARE LARGELY IRRELEVANTRELATED POST: AN EXCLUSIVE RELIANCE ON FOSSIL FUEL EMISSIONS OVERLOOKS NATURAL CARBON DIOXIDE FLOWS.What follows is a detailed analysis about CO2 in this book written with the skeptical eyes of the late Dr. Vincent Gray major critic of the UN IPCC reports. His book vividly shows why the UN models about CO2 are wrong.Chapter 8 : CARBON DIOXIDEChapter 8 : CARBON DIOXIDEThere are two gases in the Earth's atmosphere without which  living organisms could not  exist.   Oxygen  is  the  most  abundant,  ...http://globalwarmingscamandccsuperscam.blogspot.com/2015/05/chapter-8-carbon-dioxide_30.htmlThere are two gases in the Earth's atmosphere without which living organisms could not exist.Oxygen is the most abundant, 21% by volume, but without carbon dioxide, which is currently only about 0.04 percent (400 ppm) by volume, both the oxygen itself, and most living organisms on earth could not exist at all.This happened when the more complex of the two living cells (called “eukaryote”) evolved a process called a “chloroplast” some 3 billion years ago, which utilized a chemical called chlorophyll to capture energy from the sun and convert carbon dioxide into a range of chemical compounds and structural polymers by photosynthesis. These substances provide all the food required by the organisms not endowed with a chloroplast organelle in their cells.This happened when the more complex of the two living cells (called “eukaryote”) evolved a process called a “chloroplast” some 3 billion years ago, which utilized a chemical called chlorophyll to capture energy from the sun and convert carbon dioxide into a range of chemical compounds and structural polymers by photosynthesis. These substances provide all the food required by the organisms not endowed with a chloroplast organelle in their cells.This process also produced all of the oxygen in the atmosphere.The relative proportions of carbon dioxide and oxygen have varied very widely over thegeological ages as shown in Figure 8.11.Figure 8.1 Changes in oxygen and carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere over the geological agesThe relationship between concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and surfacetemperature over the geological record is shown below2.Figure 8.2 Atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide and surface temperatureover geological agesTemperature is after C.R. Scotese3 and CO2 after R.A. Berner and Z Kothavala4It will be seen that there is no correlation whatsoever between carbon dioxide concentration and the temperature at the earth’s surface.During the Cambrian a temperature only 10ºC above today endured a maximum of 18 times the current CO2 concentration. During most of the Paleozoic this reduced to 10 times over today with no temperature change. During the latter part of the Carboniferous and the Permian 250-320 million years ago, carbon dioxide concentration and temperature were similar to today but CO2 went up to nearly 8 times what it is today with the temperature was only 10ºC higher in the Jurassic. A fall in CO2 during the Cretaceous and Tertiary made little difference to the temperature and it is only quite recently that both have reached their present level. Oxygen in the atmosphere fluctuated from 15 to 35% during the whole period.The theory that carbon dioxide concentration is related to the temperature of the earth’s surface is therefore wrong.The growth of plants in the Carboniferous caused a reduction in atmospheric oxygen and carbon dioxide, forming the basis for large deposits of dead plants and other organisms. Plant debris became the basis for peat and coal, smaller organisms provided oil and gas, both after millions of years of applied heat and pressure from geological change; mountain building, erosion, deposition of sediments, volcanic eruptions, rises and fall of sea level and movement of continents. Marine organisms used carbon dioxide to build shells and coral polyps and these became the basis of limestone rocks.Increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide caused by return to the atmosphere of some of the gas that was once there promotes the growth of forests, the yield of agricultural crops and the fish, molluscs and coral polyps in the ocean.An increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide can be shown to be beneficial 5Figure 8.3. Enhancement of photosynthesis by increases of carbon dioxide5It is worth quoting the abstract of the paper by Randall et al 20135Satellite observations reveal a greening of the globe over recent decades. The role in this greening of the “CO2 fertilization” effect—the enhancement of photosynthesis due to rising CO2levels—is yet to be established. The direct CO2 effect on vegetation should be most clearly expressed in warm, arid environments where water is the dominant limit to vegetation growth. Using gas exchange theory, we predict that the 14% increase in atmospheric CO2 (1982–2010) led to a 5 to 10% increase in green foliage cover in warm, arid environments. Satellite observations, analyzed to remove the effect of variations in precipitation, show that cover across these environments has increased by 11%. Our results confirm that the anticipated CO2fertilization effect is occurring alongside ongoing anthropogenic perturbations to the carbon cycle and that the fertilization effect is now a significant land surface process.MEASUREMENT OF ATMOSPHERIC CARBON DIOXIDE CONCENTRATIONThe above estimates of atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration were made from a range of proxy estimates. The current claim that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has a controlling influence on the earth’s climate means that the claim depends on the accuracy with which this concentration can be measured, both in the past and in the present.Early chemical measurements of the concentration of carbon dioxide in the earth’s atmosphere have been suppressed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.Chapter 1 of the IPCC Fourth Report6, entitled “Historical overview of Climate Change Science” makes no mention of any early measurements. Weart7 in his History of the Carbon Dioxide Greenhouse Effect also makes no mention of them.Yet Beck8 has provided an annotated list with links to internet access of almost 200 references to peer reviewed academic scientific journal articles containing some 40,000 measurements of atmospheric carbon dioxide by chemical methods between 1800 and 1960. Comprehensive data sets in more than 390 papers were ignored despite contributions from prominent scientists like Robert Bunsen, Konrad Roentgen, and J S Haldane or the Nobel Prize winners August Krogh and Otto Warburg.Beck lists publications of measurements of atmospheric carbon dioxide in 18169 and in 183010 by Theodore de Saussure. He was the son of Horace-Benedict de Saussure, who invented the Hot Box (which resembled a greenhouse) which was the basis of the theory of the climate developed by Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier in 1822 and 1824 which is claimed to have originated the greenhouse effect. (See my Chapter 5) Yet the measurements of atmospheric carbon dioxide by de Saussure’s son are completely ignored. Other early references by Letts and Blake11 from The Royal Dublin Society give an additional list of early measurements.Beck12-14 has published several summaries and commentaries on the early measurements and includes an argument with Ralph Keeling15Engelbeen16 has provided a useful summary of Beck’s results where he disagrees with some of his conclusions. Maijer has also been critical17Most of the early measurements were from Northern Europe. Beck considered that the earliest measurements were subject to various errors but the widespread use of more reliable equipment, particularly the Pettenkofer titrimetric method in 1812 led to high accuracy, with a maximum 3% error reducing to 1% for the data of Henrik Lundegardh18,19.The measurements selected by Beck were from rural areas or the periphery of towns, under comparable conditions of a height of approx. 2m above ground at a site distant from potential industrial contamination. They showed a variation with time of day, of season, and of wind speed and direction, making it difficult to derive a local average. There were frequent measurements of concentrations higher than those reported as background concentrations by NOAA at present.These measurements were made by real people with proper instruments in a large number of localities. They give a much better appreciation of variability and change in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration over the period than the deductions from gas trapped in ice cores which are from unrepresentative locations and subject to much uncertainty20.In 1958 Charles Keeling, introduced a new technique for the accurate measurement of atmospheric CO2 using cryogenic condensation of air samples followed by NDIR spectroscopic analysis against a reference gas, using manometric calibration.Subsequently, this technique was adopted as an analytical standard for CO2 determination throughout the world, including by the World Meteorological Association.The climate models sponsored by the Intergovernmental panel on Climate Change are based on the belief that the global climate has a balanced energy which is only changed by increasing concentrations of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. These gases are assumed to be well-mixed so that their concentration, all over the world, is a constant at any one particular time, only increasing with human emissions.In order to support this theory Keeling at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, discovered that there was an almost consistent background concentration of carbon dioxide which could be considered to apply globally and identified from suitable sites which could be shown to increase with carbon dioxide emissions.The procedure required to indentify this background is described in some detail by Tans and Thoning21 for the observatory at Mauna Loa.Measurements whose standard deviation fell below a specified minimum were rejected. On average, over the entire record, there are 13.6 retained hours per day with background CO2. The rest were rejected as noise.Beck22 has discussed the Mauna Loa measurements. Comparison between old wet chemical and new physical methods in 1958 and 1967 on sea and land give a difference of about +10 ppm for the new procedureA similar procedure has been described for New Zealand 23At Baring Head maritime well mixed air masses come from the Southerly direction, and a baseline event is normally defined as one in which the local wind direction is from the South and the standard deviation of minute-by-minute CO2 concentrations is <<0.1 ppmv for 6 or more hoursThis background concentration is supposed to be well- mixed and to be unaffected by sources and sinks.Yet the oceans are themselves contaminated with sources and sinks24Figure 8 4 CO2flux for the oceans24The region around Mauna Loa includes areas with CO2 emissions, and much of the rest is a sink. It is understandable how difficult it is to get a sufficiently constant sample.In order to claim that there is such a thing as a background CO2 it has been necessary to ensure that all measurements everywhere in the world are made from samples from over the oceans. Measurements over land surfaces have been comprehensively discouraged.Yet the greenhouse effect is about emissions, namely contamination. It is crazy, to take all this trouble to make measurements which do not involve the emitted gases themselves, but only a small fraction that is considered to be well-mixed, then to claim that it is these background figures apply to the entire atmosphere.Figure 8.5 Distribution of carbon dioxide emissions25This map shows that actual local concentrations of carbon dioxide are greatest over the three large industrial areas. Since the supposed greenhouse effect is dependent on the logarithm of the carbon dioxide concentration, increases above these areas is negligible or zero and the main supposed effects are on the areas with low current concentrations.This map does not tell the whole story. Satellite measurements of carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere have recently improved with the Atmospheric Infra Red Sounder (AIRS) on NASA;s Aqua level 3 satellite, which is able to provide monthly figures for mid troposphere concentration26figures for mid troposphere concentration26Figure 8.6 Average carbon dioxide concentration in the mid troposphere July 200926This map shows that for the mid troposphere regions the high emissions from the industrial countries are circulated, by the atmosphere, so that they are no longer above the regions of emission. Since this is a time as well as a column average the actual carbon dioxide concentration at any small region in the atmosphere is changing all the time and an overall figure above a particular place on the earth is continuously varying and currently unpredictable.It also means that background measurements are no longer relevant, as are any measurements made only on the surface. If extra emissions have an effect on the climate those places where the CO2 concentration is high will have little or no change because of the logarithmic relationship. Rural and lower CO2 places would have the greatest changes from an increase and has been shown in Figure 8.3, this is likely to be beneficial. So carbon dioxide is not well-mixed in the atmosphere and the overall global models need to be modified to allow for regional CO2 change as they have already been modified to allow for regional temperature and precipitation27.NASA has even provided an animated video30 based on a model of what they think happens. It shows that actual carbon dioxide concentrations vary with time and level everywhere in the atmosphere. The new OC-2 satellite promises to make individual time- and level-based measurements.28A comparison between Figures 8.5 and 8.6 shows that there is a strong correspondence between regions with high CO2 emissions in Figure 8.5 and regions with higher CO2 concentration in Figure 8.6s. It is therefore true that the additional CO2 in the atmosphere is largely caused by CO2 emissions.There are two stable nonradioactive isotopes of carbon C12 about 98.9% and C13 about 1.1%. Since there is a slight difference in the ratio between them for C3 and C4 plants whose difference in physiology attempts are made to prove that decreases in the proportion of C13 is due to fossil fuel combustion. This is now unnecessary as the AIRS map (Figure 8.6) proves it is true.MEASUREMENT OF DOWNWARD INTENSITYThere are now measurements of downward radiation from regions absorbing radiation from the earth in associated with carbon dioxide. An example is shown in Figure 8.7Figure 8.7 Downward radiation intensity from atmospheric carbon dioxideCONCLUSIONSAtmospheric carbon dioxide is essential for all life on earth. The IPCC has deliberately concealed its irregular distribution in the atmosphere and the oceans and suppressed the evidence in the published literature. They have even ignored current satellite-derived evidence. Climate models based on an assumption that carbon dioxide concentration is approximately constant in the atmosphere or the oceans are therefore wrong.REFERENCES1Dudley R 1998 J exp Biology 201 1943-1050 http://jeb.biologists.org/content/201/8/1043.full.pdf2 Plant Fossils of West Virginia Climate during the Carboniferous Period3 Scotese C R Climate History4 Berner R A and Kothavala Z 2001 GEOCARB III: A Revised Model of Atmospheric CO2 over Phanerozoic Time American Journal of Science, Vol. 301, February, 2001,P.182±204]5 Randall J. Donohue, Michael L. Roderick, Tim R. McVicar, Graham D. Farquhar. Impact of CO2 fertilization on maximum foliage cover across the globe's warm, arid environments. Geophysical Research Letters, 2013; DOI: 10.1002/grl.505636 Le Treut, H., R. Somerville, U. Cubasch, Y. Ding, C. Mauritzen, A. Mokssit, T. Peterson and M. Prather, 2007: Historical Overview of Climate Change. In: Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Solomon, S., D. Qin, M. Manning, Z. Chen, M. Marquis, K.B. Averyt, M. Tignor and H.L. Miller (eds.)]. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA.7 Weart S 2011, The Carbon Dioxide Greenhouse Effect. The Carbon Dioxide Greenhouse Effect. The Carbon Dioxide Greenhouse Effect8. Beck, E-G, CO2 1800-1960 Historical References, Chemical Method http://www.biomind.de/realCO2/literature/CO2literature1800-1960.pdf9 Theodore de Saussure, Notes sur les variations du gaz acide carbonique dans l´atmosphere , en hiver et en ete. ; Annales de Chimie et Physique 1816, p 199 Annales de chimie et de physique ue+1816&source=bl&ots=cpEMtYnXP- &sig=9PumOQ1w0XwKTLuMN83DvbRpsOI&hl=de&ei=XePJSvirCNmM4gaWrbXHAQ&sa=X&oi=book_res ult&ct=result&resnum=1#v=onepage&q=Annales%20de%20Chimie%20et%20Physique%201816&f=false10 Theodore de Saussure 1830; Sur les variation de l´acide de carbonique atmosphérique Annales de Chimie et Physique, 44[1830], 55 http://pageshttp://www.archive.org/stream/annalesdechimie51unkngoog#page/n10http://www.archive.org/stream/annalesdechimie51unkngoog#page/n10/mode/1up11 E. Letts and R. Blake, (1899) The carbonic anhydride of the atmosphere; Roy. Dublin Soc. Sc.Proc., N. S., Vol.9, 1899-1902; Scientific Proceedings of the Royal Dublin Society, p 167/12 Beck, E-G, 2007.180 Years of Atmospheric Gas Analysis by Chemical Methods, Energy and Environment 18 259-281.13 Beck E-G Evidence of variability of atmospheric CO2 concentration during the 20thcentury http://www.biomind.de/realCO2/literature/evidence-var-corrRSCb.pdf14 Beck E-G Comment + reply from author to R F Keelng and H Mrijer on "180 Years of atmospheric CO2 gas analysis by chemical methods by"by Ernst-Georg Beck,Energy and Environment, Vol. 18(2), 259-282, 2007 http://www.biomind.de/treibhaus/180CO2/author_reply9-2.pdf15 Beck E-G Reply to Comments on 180 Years of Atmospheric CO2 GasAnalysis by Chemical Methods.” Energy & Environment, Vol. 18(2), 2007 216 Engelbeen F 2010 H istirical CO2 Measurements Ernst eck Beck's historical CO2 measurements17 H Meijer http://www.biomind.de/.../180CO2/Comment_E&E-on_Beck_Meijer_update.d..http://www.biomind.de/treibhaus/180CO2/Comment_E&E-on_Beck_Meijer_update.doc..18 H. Lundegardh, Der Kreislauf der Kohlensäure in der Natur. Fischer, Jena (680) (1924)http://www.biokurs.de/treibhaus/literatur/Lundegardh/lundegardh2.doc19 H. Lundegardh , Klima und Boden und ihre Wirkung auf das Pflanzenleben, Jena 1949Zeitschrift für Botanik : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet ArchiveSuspended between Sept. 1944 and 1952http://www.archive.org/stream/zeitschriftfrb16jena#page/n271/mode/2up20 Jaworowski, Z. 2007. CO2: The Greatest Scientific Swindle of Our Time. EIR Science (March), 38-55.21 Pieter Tans and Kirk Thoning. How we measure background CO2 at Mauna Loa http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/about/co2_measurements.pd.22 Beck E-G 50 Years of Continuous Measurement of CO2 on Mauna Loa. Energy and Environment 19 No. 7 2008.23 Manning M R, A.J. Gomez, and K.P. Pohl Trends http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/co2/baring.html.24 Takahashi T et al.,1999 Deep-Sea Research II 49 (2002) 1601–1622 Global sea–air CO2 flux based on climatological surface ocean pCO2, and seasonal biological and temperature effects http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/~csweeney/papers/taka2002.pdfhttp://www.seafriends.org.nz/issues/global/acid2.htm25 EDGAR Emission Database for Global Atmospheric Research http://edgar.jrc.ec.europa.eu/part_CO2.php.26 Climate Change Indicators Climate Change Indicators27 IPCC, 2013: Annex I: Atlas of Global and Regional Climate Projections [van Oldenborgh, G.J., M. Collins, J. Arblaster, J.H.Christensen, J. Marotzke, S.B. Power, M. Rummukainen and T. Zhou (eds.)]. In: Climate Change 2013: The Physical ScienceBasis.Contribution of Working Group I to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Stocker,T.F.,D.Qin,G.]28 NASA | A Year in the Life of Earth's CO2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1SgmFa0r0429 Orbiting Carbon Observatory OCO-2 http://oco.jpl.nasa.gov/30 CO2 Forcing Almost 30 years after Hansen's 1988 "alarm" on global warming, a claim of confirmation on CO2 forcingPosted 30th May 2015 by GeoffChapter 8 : CARBON DIOXIDE